Scorpions - Blackout [10]

Title: Scorpions - Blackout
Year/Genre/Sub-Genre/City: 1982, Heavy Metal, Hard Rock, Hanover, Germany 10/26
Matrix #: SRM-1-4039 (Mercury, label cat #)
Condition: VG+++ (LM) | Members: Scorpions (N/A) | Producer: Dieter Dierks
Cultural Facts: [10]

1. Klaus Meine Offered to Quit: While the band was writing Blackout in 1981, Klaus Meine lost his voice and offered to step aside so he would not hold the Scorpions back. Rudolf Schenker and the band refused to replace him. After two operations on his vocal cords and long vocal retraining, he came back with a wider range than before.
2. Don Dokken Sang the Placeholders: Don Dokken, then an unknown LA singer, was cutting his own album Breaking the Chains in the same studio. He laid down quick scratch vocals on a couple of songs, about 20 minutes of work, just to get the melodies on tape while Klaus healed. None of it was used, and Dokken ended up credited only for backing vocals.
3. The Screaming Man Is the Artist: The cover is a self-portrait of Austrian painter Gottfried Helnwein, his head wrapped in bandages with forks bent into his eyes. Rudolf Schenker later dressed up as that same character in the "No One Like You" video, and the image became one of the band's best-selling T-shirts.